“Platforms, whether they’re trading platforms, lending platforms, whether they call themselves centralized or they call themselves decentralized….are an important place for public policy and investor protection,” Gensler said at the event, staged by Solidus Labs, a company that offers crypto market surveillance services.

He added that when the SEC and trading platforms cannot come to an understanding, “we’re going to use the enforcement tool,” suing entities that fail to register with the agency. “But I think a better approach for these platforms…is to work to get registered within the law.”

The largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase Global Inc.
COIN,
-1.06%,
Kraken Inc. and FTX US are regulated by various federal and state authorities, but not as securities exchanges. Advocates say that regulating crypto exchanges similarly to the way public stock exchanges or alternative trading systems are currently would bring greater protection for investors against fraud and manipulation.

Coinbase, Kraken and FTX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Critics of the SEC’s approach argue that the regulatory framework for overseeing traditional securities exchanges are not suitable for venues where cryptocurrencies are traded.

Former SEC Chairman Clayton, who was appointed by President Trump in 2017 and served in the role through December of 2020 agreed with his successor that crypto exchanges and issuers must work harder to comply with existing securities laws, and that there as been a concerted strategy on the part of some in the industry to flout those laws during his tenure.

“In this marketplace, there were a lot of people who…thought they could throw a fastball by the regulators and decided that they were going to take their chances of pushing the regulatory envelope with the hope that regulation would come in that direction,” he said.

Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a blockchain trade association, said on Twitter that the summit audience remained confused as to what Gensler and Clayton were asking exchanges and issuers to do.

In October, Coinbase issued a proposal for a new regulatory framework for cryptocurrency exchanges that would create a new category called “marketplaces for digital assets,” overseen by a entirely new agency or a separate division within one of the existing regulators.

Coinbase’s proposal posits that this new financial regulator would primarily be responsible for registering and supervising marketplaces for digital assets, or MDAs, to ensure against fraud and manipulation and to mandate that issuers of digital assets disclose relevant information to market participants. The new regulator would also oversee so-called initial coin offerings, which are often used to raise money for new ventures, similar to how public companies raise money by issuing stock.

Dan Gallagher, the chief legal officer of the online broker Robinhood Markets Inc.
HOOD,
-3.32%,
which offers cryptocurrencies including bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+2.28%
and ether
ETHUSD,
+1.53%,
criticized the idea of a new regulator as unrealistic in remarks last month.

Meanwhile, Marco Santori, chief legal officer for Kraken Digital Asset Exchange told Bloomberg in September that “you’re just living in a fantasy world if you don’t believe that the industry is going to face heavier, more Wall Street-like regulation from governments in the U.S. and abroad.”

Powell repeated that it was “appropriate” for the Fed to consider to accelerate the pace of tapering at its December meeting so that it wraps up a few months earlier.

Stocks
DJIA,
+1.03%

SPX,
+1.45%,
which fell sharply after Powell first opened the door for a faster pace of taper on Tuesday, rebounded in the morning session on Wednesday.

At the moment, the Fed is slowing down its asset purchases at a $15 billion per-month pace, which will end the $105 billion of on-going purchases in June.

Economists think the Fed will discuss doubling the pace of the taper to $30 billion per month, which would end the program in March.

Completing asset purchases in the first quarter will give the Fed the flexibility to raise interest rates next year if necessary.

Even after the taper is done, Fed policy will be easy. Indeed, even by standing still, the Fed’s policy has become even easier this year as inflation has risen, economists note.

The Fed cut interest rates to near zero in March 2020 just as the economy was shutting down from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Fed will provide its new forecast for interest rates after its Dec. 14-15 meeting. In September, Fed officials were split evenly over whether interest rates would rise next year.

Overall, the House hearing engendered more heat than light on Fed policy and the economic outlook. Republicans on the committee used their time to blame the sharp rise in inflation this year on the fiscal policy of House Democrats.

For their part, Democrats defended their spending and planned spending as necessary improvements to help working Americans and pointed out that President Donald Trump’s tax cut package wasn’t deficit neutral.

Powell said he doesn’t expect the Federal Reserve’s wind-down of its asset-buying program to be a “disruptive event” in financial markets, as he and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testified on Wednesday for a second day, this time in front of the House.

On Tuesday, Powell told a Senate panel that it was appropriate for the Fed to consider speeding up the taper of asset purchases and said it was time to retire the word “transitory” when describing inflation.

There was one difference this time around, however. Rather than theatric finger-wagging, members of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce are fine-tuning legislation that could reshape Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social-media companies from third-party content that appears on their digital platforms.

The hearing, ominously titled “Holding Big Tech Accountable: Targeted Reforms to Tech’s Legal Immunity,” comes at a time of mounting reckoning for tech’s biggest players amid a maelstrom of antitrust legislation, lawsuits and regulatory fines.

“There is a bipartisan desire” to make companies like Facebook and Google GOOGL GOOG legally liable for algorithms that amplify content that leads to offline violence, committee chairman Mike Doyle (D., Pa.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said. “These platforms don’t want to held accountable.”

Filled with horrifying details of drug addiction, death, mental illness and sexual abuse among social-media victims, the hearing was the latest attempt to push through legislative efforts to “target reforms” for tech’s controversial legal liability shield.

Haugen, who in October testified before the Senate Commerce Committee shortly after she leaked a cache of internal Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, covered familiar territory. “Facebook has hidden from you countless ways to make things safer” in pursuit of “profits over people,” she said Wednesday.

Meta was not immediately available for comment, but the company has repeatedly claimed it has taken extreme measures in security spending and hiring to tamp down on misinformation and hate speech coursing through its sprawling platform. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has testified several times on Capitol Hill the past few years in an attempt to reassure lawmakers, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri is scheduled to testify for the first time before a Senate subcommittee next week.

But it has done little to counteract a backlash over internal research leaked by Haugen. The research found Instagram made body image issues worse for one in three teen girls, for example.

“We are at a watershed moment. It has been more than a decade since significant antitrust tech legislation,” Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, told the House panel. “The next three to six months are the most important to finally put the guardrails” in regulating Big Tech responsibly.

While the Biden administration reportedly eyes data privacy as a civil-rights issue, European regulators are sharpening their assault. On Tuesday, Meta was ordered by UK regulators to sell social-media animated company Giphy on the premise it is harmful to users and advertisers.

“We have decided that the only effective way to address the competition issues that we have identified is for Facebook to sell Giphy, in its entirety, to a suitable buyer,” the Competition & Markets Authority said.

“The whistleblower’s reports and testimony did a lot of damage to Facebook,” Ashley Baker, director of public policy for The Committee for Justice, told MarketWatch. “Her testimony identified legitimate concerns that particularly resonate with parents on a personal level. If the impact of the whistleblower is that fewer teenagers are allowed by their parents to use Facebook or Instagram, that certainly impacts the company by taking away part of their user base and is bad for the long-term popularity of the platform.”

She described reserving a median sedan for pickup on the Sunday before Thanksgiving week, to be used for one week at the quoted price of $343.27, or $414.93 after taxes. But when she arrived  at the Brooklyn, N.Y., Hertz location at her appointed time, she says that she waited in line for two hours before the customer service representative closed up shop for the day and told Klonick to call customer service to find another car. Meanwhile, Klonick’s husband had tried calling the customer service line, and was told they could make a new reservation at a different location for $1,800, which they declined. 

“I had a contract! I had met its terms! Hertz simply had to fulfill its side of the deal!” Klonick writes.

A customer service rep sent them to two other locations, including LaGuardia Airport in Queens, to get a car. But it still took them days to finally get a vehicle, which had mechanical problems, no gas in the tank, and was dirty, Klonick claimed. The rental ended up costing them $943 — more than $500 over the price set in their original contract.

TL, DR: Klonick said Hertz wouldn’t honor her contract, and tried to make her pay $1,800 for a rental four times. She ended up paying more than $500 over the quoted price for what she describes as a bad car. 

And that’s not counting her calling Hertz customer service more than 20 times, by her estimation, and getting hung up on six times. In her complaint letter, she requested $748.90 in total damages, including the $528.07 she paid above her promised rate in the violated contract; the $133.51 spent on Ubers going to various Hertz locations to find a car; and the $87.32 she says was spent on a “Very Nice Bottle of Champagne” following the ordeal. Klonick also said that she will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and any equivalent state and federal agencies.

Her post went viral, drawing more than 10,000 retweets and quote tweets, and more than 42,000 “likes.” Many people chimed in with their own negative experiences renting a car from the company. 

Others suggested they would now boycott Hertz after reading about Klonick’s experience. 

And plenty of followers couldn’t resist sharing a “Seinfeld” episode that dealt with a similar rental car issue, including the iconic line: “So you know how to take the reservation; you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation. The holding.” 

Hertz was not immediately available for comment.

Venting on Twitter seems to have worked for Klonick, however: She later tweeted that an executive customer rep from the Hertz corporate office called a little after 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and refunded her the entire amount that she requested on her credit card. 

She adds that when she asked how this would have been resolved if the tweet hadn’t gone viral, she was given an “executive” email to use in the future, and the representative said that “they endeavor to serve all customers equally.”  

Hertz has hit a few road blocks of late.  The company laid off 10,000 employees across its North America operations to cut costs earlier int the pandemic. And it filed for chapter 11 in May 2020, but exited bankruptcy earlier this summer, ready to capitalize on the rebounding travel economy.

That travel rebound helped drive up car rental prices across the U.S. this year, as tight vehicle supply and a surge in demand from travelers eager to hit the road led to a rental car shortage. In fact, one customer told MarketWatch that it was cheaper for him to rent a U-Haul truck for $100 a day, plus mileage and gas, than dropping between $400 and $500 a day for a sedan. “If you could even get one — most were sold out,” he said. 

Dispatches from a Pandemic: Matt Landau wanted to find a rental car at a reasonable price — it was cheaper for him to rent a U-Haul truck

The rental-car shortage stemmed, in part, from rental-car companies across the country selling cars in the early days of the pandemic when people stayed home, and a dearth of chips required for a car’s safety systems, braking and entertainment consoles. During the summer, the average daily car rental rate was up 90% compared to 2019.

Read more: $259 a day for a rental car? Here’s how to rent one this summer without blowing your budget

And: 9 alternatives to overpriced rental cars

What’s more, now more than 165 former Hertz customers from Delaware, California, Florida, Illinois and other states are suing the company for allegedly having them falsely arrested and jailed over accusations that the vehicles they rented were reported missing or stolen. Hertz has said that, “The vast majority of these cases involve renters who were many weeks or even months overdue returning vehicles and who stopped communicating with us well beyond the scheduled due date.”

Li Auto
LI,
+3.84%
said it delivered 13,485 of its Li ONE luxury SUVs in November, an 190% year-over-year increase. Total deliveries for the 11 months ended on Nov. 30 reached 76,404, the company said.

XPeng
XPEV,
-1.62%
delivered 15,613 EVs in November, a 270% rise from November 2020, the company said. To date, the company has delivered 82,155 vehicles, a 285% increase over the same period in 2020.

“The robust delivery momentum bears witness to the competitiveness of XPeng’s smart EVs and steady execution in light of the ongoing challenges in various aspects of the global supply chain,” the company said in a statement. Nio and Li Auto didn’t discuss any supply issues.

Some of the optimism about Chinese EVs and car sales broadly appeared to be spilling over to Ford Motor Co.
F,
+6.31%,
with Ford shares up more than 5% in morning trading. Ford is scheduled to report November sales on Friday.

Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+1.43%
and General Motors Co.
GM,
+4.19%
report quarterly sales and are next scheduled to do so in early January.

XPeng stock has gained more than 30% this year, while Li Auto around 26%. Nio shares are in the red for the year, down 17%. Their performance compares with gains of about 23% for the S&P 500 index.
SPX,
+1.78%